Then, although he had known this fact from the start, was there some hidden reason why Gabe had not said a word about it?
They went on talking for a while, the man evidently in no hurry to leave his comfortable seat in order to once more take up his walking through the pine forest.
Teddy could not but notice how often those greedy eyes rested on his gun; or it might be something else belonging to the outfit. Plainly Gabe Hackett was wishing some great good fortune might throw a chance in his way to gain possession of some of these things.
And Amos thought he saw more than that, as he continued to watch the burly former logger out of the tail of his eye. He had just mentioned to Teddy a suspicion that was creeping through his mind; and sitting there, the boy kept following it up, trying to make ends meet, yet never seeming quite able to do so.
He wondered why Gabe should look toward Dolph so many times, and always with a sudden little tightening of the lips. If it had been Teddy now, Amos could understand, and believe that the unprincipled man might be plotting some harm to the son of the lumberman who defied the Trust; but Dolph was a stranger in these Michigan woods, his home being in faraway Cincinnati.
Could it be barely possible, Amos wondered, that this rough man knew about the father of Dolph being a man of almost unlimited money, one of the big millionaire manufacturers of the thriving city on the bank of the Ohio; and was he even daring to lay some bold plan, looking to kidnaping the boy, to hold him for a ransom?
Lots of people would say that such things, while being done frequently in Italy, Greece, and such Old World countries, were just impossible in up-to-date free America. Why even Amos knew it was just to the contrary. He read the papers every chance he could get; and many a time had he discovered where Italians, or others, had taken to these methods, with the idea of forcing people with money to divide with them.
There was that case of the Cudahy boy, for instance; and numerous others of like boldness. Oh! no, such things are not at all confined to Europe. They are being planned and executed right in our own country, every week. The only question that staggered Amos was how such a small-minded fellow as this giant, could ever engineer a scheme like this. But perhaps he may have backing they knew nothing of; and that there were wheels within wheels. Dolph might be made to disappear, just to make it look as though Teddy Overton’s abduction were in the ordinary nature of things; when in truth it was all being done to force the lumber company to seek new fields, and leave this region to the opposition.
So Amos was wrestling with a pretty big proposition as he sat there by the fire, listening to the man talk, and hoping to pick up a few little clues from what he said, that might lead to disclosures.